


Embedded

by withyouandthemoon



Category: The Vampire Diaries & Related Fandoms, The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Vampire Bartender!Caroline, a twist on the soulmate setting and then another twist on that, light smut alongside blood and gore alert, plus a lot of mention of sex, some good old-fashioned blood-shedding and torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 07:59:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16445933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withyouandthemoon/pseuds/withyouandthemoon
Summary: Everyone thought they were soulmates except themselves. And now a crazy old witch set out to change her mind on the subject, all while sticking keys in her heart and leaving her on deserted cliffs for fun. Caroline was no damsel in distress. she just had some soul-searching to do before she met her rescuer on top of the cliff. It was either her soulmate, or well, Klaus-or maybe both.





	Embedded

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cupcakemolotov](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cupcakemolotov/gifts).



> For my favorite author in the whole fandom. I don't say this enough but I feel so blessed to be stanning the same ship as you, and I'm pretty sure I don't just speak for myself on that matter. I hope this brings you as much joy as your works have given me.  
> P. S. I keep getting flashbacks of Jar of Hearts when I was outlining this. I tried my best to work around that but if there's anything that feels familiar I apologize in advance. It was just SUCH A GREAT FIC.

Ever since that fateful night when she became a vampire almost a decade ago (something Caroline had come to deem as a blessing in disguise in her own head), Caroline had never felt this _human_ as she shivered uncontrollably from another harsh gush of wind hitting her sweat-drenched shirt.

As hard as she tried to contain the movement to the minimum, she still had to bite her tongue for the thousandth time to keep herself from screaming out at the blinding pain piercing from her heart, ironically just as sharp as the first time that witchy bitch rammed the key in there with her damned witchy mojos–you’d think her tough, _dead_ , fist-sized cluster of muscles would have worn the stupid piece of metal out somehow after the past god-knew-how-many hours.

But oh no, the pesky little thing was apparently as resilient as her own heart which, like her, just didn’t know when to back down. The hard teeth of old copper kept digging and the tender flesh remained sensitive as ever without numbing for even the slightest bit, diligently reminding Caroline of the presence of a strange, unconsented object in her body (like she had to be reminded of that). And to think she’d thought the bloody antique was pretty when Beatrice first fished it out of the ancient-looking cloth wrap.

Caroline had to laugh. It was just like her to admire a key presented by her mysterious kidnapper, and just her luck that said key would be lodged into her heart seconds later without a reason. Well, to be fair the witch did give her a reason, but “I was bored out of my mind after living for more than a millennia and I’d like to poke fun at my dear old frenemy by sticking a key inside a vital organ of his hearsay lady friend” was hardly a convincing one, let alone justifiable.

And to top it all off, she was left under this nameless cliff with a snapped neck and her kidnapper nowhere in sight. Stuck between high waters and a hard place, Caroline had no choice but to mix idioms with her pain-meddled brain and go _up_.

The pain in her heart was unrelenting, but that wasn’t the worst part. Caroline could feel blood seeping out of the open wound, spilling everywhere inside her body which was weakening by the second because her life source wasn’t going where it should. She was nauseous and dizzy, her limbs felt like they weighed a ton, she was sore and sweating from all the strains of climbing up a freaking cliff-all symptoms she thought she’d ever suffer from again.

Not after she died and came back as an immortal monster.

But lately it felt like no matter how much she’d seen and experienced and grown, nature always had a way of showing her just how naïve she still was. Like actually believing she was invincible because she sucked blood, ran faster and could heal from a few little scratches. Or because she caught the eyes of the self-claimed “most powerful creature on earth”-not that Caroline would ever admit out loud to _that_.

Yet stranded on the side of steep rocks in the middle of the night, the only sound scratching on her eardrums the derisive hisses of the ocean waves, for a moment she felt more vulnerable than when she was merely a fragile human teenage cheerleader, when she could-and did indeed-die from pretty much anything that was remotely harmful in the world.

Caroline wondered if she’d relied too much on her vampire powers, spoiled by them even. Unlike most of her kind, vampirism had always felt like more of a liberating gift than an unbreakable curse to her. A safety rope, if you will-Caroline snickered at the untimely analogy. What she wouldn’t give to have one of those around her waist right now.

Or a pair of strong arms that would startle her and suck the air out of her lungs without a single squeeze, the touch of his skin doing wonders to her body even when blocked with layers of clothes, making her freeze and heat up at the same time. And then there would come the hot whisper alongside her earlobe, careless of or perhaps purposefully being intrusive, whatever meaning the words conveyed registering at least half a minute later than the warmth of his breath and the electricity that particular pitch of voice sent through whichever side of her he was leaning to, making the other side cold and wanting.

“You like being a vampire even more than you let on, love.” There was always a hint of smile in his voice when they were positioned like that. She still hadn’t figured out how he did that, putting expressions on his sinful voice when half the time people couldn’t even read them from his equally sinful face-and the other half they just thought they did, falling for the little show that he was so pleased to put on.

“What did I say about projecting, Klaus?”

“What did I say about deflecting, Caroline?”

He always did that. Caressing her name on his tongue like it was the most natural thing in existence, like there wasn’t a fire simmering at the back of his throat and she could feel the heat far across the charged air between them.

“Well I’m not denying anything, am I?”

Klaus had smirked at her concession, “that does sound like a major improvement.”

Truth was it was one of the few rare things about which she didn’t mind being totally honest with him. Their encounters were short as the winter solstice days when not much light was supposed to shine through, and they spoke in riddles that blurred into puffs of mist as soon as they were breathed through the achingly hot lips.

But she did like being a vampire, maybe a little too much. She grew so comfortable in her monster skin that once it was stripped like now, she felt even less than a human. What did they say again? What nature giveth, nature taketh away-yep, Mother Nature was a bitch, just like Beatrice who stuck keys in people’s heart for some afternoon teatime recreation and then left them on deserted shores to _not die_.

At least she wouldn’t die.

Another round of dizziness attacked at her and Caroline gripped onto the cutting rocks with all her might. She saw a patch of white protruding out of the mangled flesh of her fingers but didn’t have the heart to check if it was her own bone-she could barely feel it anyway, everything fading in comparison to the white-hot glaring agony in the middle of her chest.

Caroline was no stranger to pain. In fact she doubted any supernatural being was, considering two of the three main species originated from death, be it of others or their own. It sucked, sure, but it was par for the course. There was immortality (or above-average longevity in some cases), the steamy supernatural-element-infused sex, and then there was the pain. That was just how things were.

 _Don’t just breathe through it. That’s amateurs’ trick._ She could hear Klaus’ soft voice as she swallowed another lump of blood and clots down her throat, which brought a tiny twisted smile to her trembling lips. Sometimes the guy was just the epitome of mansplaining and had not a clue that she only played along because she liked the feeling of his voice buzzing under her skin and she didn’t want it to stop.

“Breathing through is just another way of fighting the pain. You don’t fight the pain. You embrace it, become one with it.” She remembered his words in one of their mindless post-sex conversations when she asked about the turning of werewolves, “it’s…somewhat similar to riding a horse. Let your bones be shaken and just go with it. Of course you’d be sore in the morning,” she merely hummed at his obvious innuendo, too comfortable curled up on his chest to make it a snort, “but in the moment it’s the most freeing thing in the world.”

“See there’s a difference. You wolves are actually riding this ‘horse of pain’ to somewhere-the woods, moonlit wilderness, call of nature, scattered bunnies-” he pinched her ass for that and swallowed her light yelp with a rough kiss, “-whatever. But for others it’s more like a carousel. Just stuck there, no purpose, no point.”

As she said, sometimes he was the epitome of mansplaining. But just as often, in moments like these, she found his eyes glued to her with wonder and awe like she was the single most suspending plot-twist in the history of literature.

“Then you find a point. If anyone can do it, it’s you, sweetheart.”

Caroline wasn’t so sure about that right now. She’d been painstakingly climbing ever since she woke up at the bottom of the cliff and exhausted all dead-ends of finding a way out-no people, no ships, no twigs to make a craft, no whale or dolphin rides to catch, and she didn’t think waiting down there would do her any good. Beatrice wasn’t that stupid.

That old hag wanted to have fun, and Caroline doubted her idea of fun was “young half-desiccated vampire damsel rescued after three days of distress under a cliff”. For all she knew the last shenanigan Beatrice pulled for her personal entertainment was messing with the soulmate business. No one with half a sane mind would commit such a deed-people’s, well, vampires’ hearts were on the line.

Caroline could still recall laughing close to tears when she first heard about the soulmate myth. It was shortly after she was turned, when she accidentally walked in on her then best friend’s then vampire boyfriend changing and saw the tattoo-like little mark on his back. She’d felt eerily strange about the mark, her feet seconds from flashing her off on some inexplicable survival instinct when her eyes couldn’t look away, like whenever her other friend Bonnie lit candles with a snap of her fingers. It smelt magic from a mile away, and extremely powerful one at that.

But she still laughed nonstop when Stefan patiently regaled her with the soulmate myth passed on through generations of vampires, about how almost every vampire was destined to meet a soulmate in their immortal life, who bore the exact same soulmate mark that they did since the successful transition into a vampire.

She couldn’t help it. It sounded too much like a mockery, an eternity of waiting for the other monster half of you, not knowing if they were not yet born, or dead centuries, eons, before you. A fate written in the ashes of stars-with dried blood.

But Stefan was all dreamy-eyed about it, his normally broody face lighting up in the ever-darkness of the room, “it gives us a meaning, Caroline. Something to look forward to.”

“You really believe in this stuff, huh?”

“Well you don’t have to take my word for it.” Stefan only shrugged good-naturedly, “when you go back home, find yours and touch it. You’ll know what I mean when you feel…the call.”

It was then that Caroline realized something was wrong.

She was always attentive to her body, every square inch of it. She spent a good ten minutes inspecting herself back and front every day after she took a shower. She’d noticed how her old (or fairly new, but she wouldn’t dwell on that) scars were gradually fading after she turned, how the veins on the inner side of her arms seemed a shade bluer because of the slight change of her skin tone, but never a mark like this.

That night she prolonged her self-inspecting routine, bringing in two extra hand-hold mirrors other than the huge one on the wall of her bathroom. Three mirrors reflecting inside one another with a million Carolines trapped in creepy optical tunnels and corridors but not one of them was blessed with even a smudge of magic ink.

Later she learned the word “outlier”, whispered in pity or mocking sneers. A vampire without a soulmate mark.

At first it didn’t feel like much of a loss. So many possibilities had already been ripped from her without warning since she, well, died. She didn’t get to grow old, she didn’t get to have kids, she didn’t get to have a normal human life. Instead she got faster, higher, stronger. Not too shabby a bargain if you asked her.

And now she didn’t get to meet a soulmate. It would just be fleeting affairs and nameless sex and occasional orgies. So basically, a Wednesday night for the rest of eternity. Not a big deal, considering she was already stuck in the filler year of age seventeen.

But as the years went by and she’d heard so many vampire couples talking about that “click” when they saw each other’s matching marks, how they could sense each other’s feelings and whatnot and how “whole” they felt together; when one after another her vampire boyfriends either left her, or used her, or treated her like trash because they “didn’t have a future”, Caroline had started to feel the unbearable weight of nothingness.

Stefan had told her all about the “call”. You were supposed to feel a poignant sense of longing and desire when you touch your mark, like pushing down a button that connected to your mother ship (her words, of course). Yet even without an arbitrary little mark Caroline could feel that damned call all the same, only hers didn’t lead to anywhere, except the phantom itching spread out all over her alabaster skin that was starting to evolve into a bone-deep pain. The constant scratching of her hollowed soul.

“Do you still believe in soulmates?” Beatrice had asked her, sitting right across the chair where she’d kept Caroline immobile with magic.

Caroline answered her with a scoff, “what, so you kidnapped me here to have high school locker-room girl talk?”

“So sharp a tongue; so eager to hide the rest.” Beatrice shook her head in condescending amusement, “you and Niklaus.”

“-are none of your business.”

Beatrice shrugged, “no need to point out the obvious, little vampire. We both know that’s the exhilarating part.”

Caroline sighed, “can’t you go watch some reality shows or something? I could even do you a favor and open you a premium account on Netflix with Klaus’ credit card. I’m sure he won’t mind, seeing as you go way back, according to you.”

“Kind as that offer is,” Beatrice’s green eyes gleamed in the dim lights of the room, “I prefer the old-fashioned way of meddling in person. Now back to my question: do you still believe in soulmates?”

Caroline sucked in a breath as she began to feel the claws of a magic-induced migraine digging at her skull, “wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Indeed I do.” Beatrice smiled, her voice warm and patient like the most-experienced grade-school teacher, while the aneurysm she was giving Caroline intensified. Caroline had never experienced anything like this-the pain was not merely a fireball exploding in her head like a usual magical migraine. No, it was focused and exacting, and Caroline’s brain felt like an ancient book with its pages all stuck together, only they were now being separated one slice after another by a rough merciless hand.

She heard Beatrice’s eerily calm voice amongst her own agonized pants, “do you ever long for that inevitable pull? Envy that bond that soulmates are said to have? Just between us girls, do you secretly picture how you will tingle all over whenever your destined one and only steps foot into the same room as you?”

Never in a million years would Caroline answer to that, especially not to her sick torturer. But the truth was she did. After all these years of being pitied and ridiculed, of feeling less from missing that joke of a mark, there was still a part of her that would touch her own skin inch by withering inch in the coldest of nights, imagining a pair of hands that would bring every dying cell back to life, and lips and tongue that would burn into her a mark only visible to the two of them.

What surprised Caroline was that in these wild imaginations of hers that other person was no longer a puff of faceless mist.

She didn’t know when or how it changed; but every once in a while when she indulged herself into those secret chambers of her dreams, she saw him.

She saw Klaus.

And there would be an imperceptible lapse in her whole existence, like time actually stumbled, leaving her dangling in blank but vibrating in anticipation. Like the first time he sauntered into the door of her bar, the sound of the zipper of his leather jacket clicking with one of his necklaces echoing into her ears, and she shook her cocktail shaker 31 times instead of 30.

Which annoyed her to no end because she had a system. 30 shakes, over her shoulder, using 10% of her usual strength, and you’d find the perfect sheer of mist on the surface of the container. She’d been doing it for almost five years without a single miss-that was, until the night Klaus walked into her bar.

There was a subtle burning creeping up her skin even before she noticed him. Tiny flames and sparks that were so easy to overlook in the hustle and bustle of a fully-packed bar at 10 in the evening, when a whole day of intermittent but nonstop alcohol consumption made every local vampire in the house louder than a bunch of underage-drinking kids. But the heat, slowly yet determinedly, shrouded her in a warm haze, invisible smoke teasing her senses into tipsy excitement even though she had a strict no-drinking-while-bartending rule. And her palms, all of a sudden feeling like they were kissed by fire, craved the coolness of her shaker a moment too long.

Merely a blink of an eye, and there was no going back. Something undefinably extra just like the all too gorgeous man pushing himself into her face in a regal stance, his dark-blonde eyelashes barely hiding the smoldering stare behind.

“Red, neat, from the tap.”

Up close, Caroline could sense the residue murderous vibe radiating off of him. His jaw was set into hard lines, his shoulders tense, his eyes slightly squinted like more experienced vampires tended to do when they felt the short-of-emerging veins tapping just under their taut skin. Flecks of amber glinted in his irises like hot breathing charcoal, and an urge stirred inside Caroline to roll in those deadly heat even if it killed her in golden-colored blazes.

Wait, that color…something registered in her head and her back stiffened for a millisecond before she let out a snort.

“Adding the magic word would be nice.”

He smiled, running his hand along that inviting scruff on his chin, “I’d say ‘incendia’, but it’s already so hot in here.”

“If you are going for lame and cheeky with your lines, then congratulations, you’re doing great.” Caroline fake-winked at him, clenching her fists a little to hide the flushed palms. The line was wrong, sure, but he must be doing everything else right-not that Caroline would tell him.

“And if the art of bartending entails beauty and tardiness, you’re excelling at it, love.”

Caroline whipped around to face her glass shelf, making sure he could see the reflection of her hard scoffing face. Looking to no avail for a slightly chipped or stained glass (she knew her perfectionist ways would bite her in the ass one day), she settled for taking the one on the top of the stack, making sure to let the wide neckline of her silk blouse sag effortlessly in the motion, fully revealing her delicate shoulder blades.

The almost inaudible intake of breath sent shivers down her back.

She poured half an inch of scotch in the glass, staring defiantly at him all the way but he said nothing, his eyes dark and intrigued. Waving Vicky, the on-call human “volunteer” over, she gently took the brunette’s offered wrist, “knife or me?”

Vicky laughed, toying with her wild curls in nonchalance, “you had to ask?”

Caroline shrugged. Vicky was in this half for the money, and half for the exhilaration. Five years ago, or even three, Caroline would frown at the clear self-destructive tendencies or even try to talk her out of it like a mother hen, but tonight she just looked Vicky right in the eyes while her fangs descended and murky veins marred her face.

_Beware of the monster, always._

She sank her fangs in and withdrew almost instantly, situating the open wound towards the glass as she licked her lips clean. In the arousing dripping sound of blood she glanced at the man at the bar, taking in the gorging hunger in his eyes, not directed at the velvet red liquid quickly filling the glass, but at her. Biting the corner of her lips, Caroline’s eyes lowered for a second, only to notice the dried blood in his fingernails, and images flooded her head of those fingers over her, on her, in her…

As if possessed, Caroline bit into her own index finger and hovered it just above Vicky’s rosy lips. No need for further prompting, Vicky sucked it in, her tongue wrapping around the incision while her eyes half-closed in ecstasy. Caroline’s breath hitched as she heard the tiny cracks of the bar top, a churning in her stomach when she thought about those bloodied fingers that were crushing it.

The moment ended in haste when Vicky let go of her finger, the wound on her wrist already healed, “well that was super fun. We should make it a habit.”

“Vicky…I don’t think we should see each other anymore.” Caroline responded in a suddenly trembling voice.

“But I thought…? Why?” Vicky’s eyes widened, rims red.

Caroline sighed with a sad smile, “you and I both know we’re on different paths. It’s just not meant to be.”

“But I love you!” Vicky exclaimed dramatically, her eyes watering fast.

“Has that ever been enough for us?”

Caroline picked up the glass just in time to catch a few drops of Vicky’s tears, “thanks, Vic.”

Vicky wiped her face, all anguish gone with a flick of her hair, “no problem, I love our improv sessions, plus I have an audition tomorrow.” She dabbed a finger under her eyes to fix the running mascara, “hey you’re really good at this. Did you take those lines from another show or something?”

Caroline nodded, the edges of her smile dimming slightly, “yeah, something like that.”

Sometimes she thought about how plain and lame the dialogue would be if her life was a TV show, how it would be canceled mid-season, if picked up by an equally plain and lame network at all. But she didn’t dwell on that, as her life ran year after year like the unfinished script hidden in someone’s bottom drawer, stained with countless liquor and the stench of loneliness.

“Let me guess. You are into role-playing?”

She heard the man’s husky voice behind her as Vicky sashayed back into the crowd. Slipping the drink across the counter to him, Caroline rolled her eyes, “whatever filthy fantasies you are running in your filthy mind, stop it.” Yet her voice sounded weak somehow, more like a plea than a warning.

He smirked, giving her a knowing look, taking the glass right where she’d held it seconds ago, and Caroline startled at the shocks on her finger tips, her skin humming even at the indirect touch.

And to her observation the man wasn’t immune either. He paused for a second, his fingers lingering, and when he finally opened his mouth his voice sounded strained, “this is not what I ordered.”

“I know.”

He swished the glass casually, the shadows of red swirling in his eyes of blue, “and the tears? Trying to make me taste remorse?”

“Nah, just an extra kick of salt.”

“I would rather lick that off your wrist.” He smirked, thumb caressing the wall of the glass like it was warm trembling flesh, the tip of his tongue brushing over his bottom lip in blatant seduction.

Two could play the game, and Caroline always rose at the face of a challenge. “Call it a bartender’s magic-you don’t know what you want until I serve it to you.”

“Careful with the flair for dominance, love.” He raised the glass at her, “I might get attached.”

At the time, Caroline wouldn’t have known how foreshadowing this particular conversation from their first encounter would be, at least in the bedroom department. They’d tried the bloodied fingers thing, the dominant thing, the role-play thing (she could still recall how she’d licked the dent Cinderella’s glass shoe left at the bottom of his spine while his iron-hard cock spilled into her palm), and a thousand more.

Her life may have been a cheap run-down teen drama but when he came into the picture it suddenly shifted into a European movie that had subtitles but might as well didn’t because there wasn’t much dialogue to begin with.

She wasn’t sure about the getting attached part though-or so she told herself. They’d known each other for five years but the total time they’d spent together was less than five weeks. She was always moving. Something she promised herself ever since she left her supernatural Bermuda of a hometown as a newly-turned vampire and never looked back.

Vampires didn’t put down roots. They were dead and nothing would ever grow out of it.

So she stayed in one town after another, some for a couple months, some merely days. There was never really a shortage of supernatural bars if you knew where to look, and it helped that she was pretty and made a kick-ass Bloody Mary with a special emphasis on the “B”.

But Klaus always found her. He never made a fuss about her disappearing without a goodbye. He’d just stalk into whatever bar she was working at with a smirk on his face or simply sneak into her bedroom with his face between her legs, bringing her to the edge even before she awoke but left her hanging on the precipice long after she did, until it was dawn and she was finally shown the mercy of erupting in tandem with the morning sun-Caroline wasn’t complaining about _that_.

She didn’t know how he did that. He probably had an army of minions and some top-notch tech guys to put chips in everything she owned so he could track her to the other side of the earth. But that explanation leaned too much towards the “getting attached” thing and Caroline’s skin felt flushed and clammy even just thinking about it.

Or maybe it was because she was at the end of her thread hanging to the side of a cliff with a key in her heart.

“It’ll be our little secret.” Beatrice had whispered once her painful scream subsided, “see? Good as new from the outside.”

Caroline looked down with great effort, fighting through each agonizing breath. True as the witch said, there was no visible proof of the torture she had been, and still was, subjected to. No open wound, no scratches, not even a hole or blood stains on her top. Damned witches and their damned magic. “Why bother? He’s gonna find out right away. It’s not like I traded my voice for this or anything.”

Beatrice laughed long and hard at that.

“Good to know I’ve still got a decent sense of humor.” Caroline bit out through her clenched teeth.

“Oh sweetie I’m sorry, it’s not your joke.” Beatrice eyed her with suspicious delight and sympathy, “It just astounds me how strong the pull is-and how blind you appear to be. You laugh in contempt at the mere mention of soulmates,” her pointed stare grabbed onto Caroline’s like claws of ice, “yet here you are, so sure that Niklaus would show at the first sign of you in peril.”

“Have you ever wondered why he could always find you so fast? Why you can’t seem to shake him off your thoughts? Why you trusted him so easily?” Beatrice’s voice lowered enough to give her goose bumps, “or, if you care to reminisce, what divine force drove you out of that little town before your friends got on his wrong side?”

“You’ve seen enough to know there is no such thing as coincidence, _child_.”

A gust of piercing cold wind brought Caroline out of her tumbled thoughts. She should really focus on climbing rather than letting her mind wander freely while her body got dangerously close to desiccation. If she should desiccate in this state, would she fall off the cliff and break into a thousand stone pieces? Would Klaus collect every one of them and put her back together?

Caroline gagged a little at the mental picture. Klaus was probably more into these morbid thoughts. _If I could grind you into dust and blend you in my paints_ …he used to muse into her ear while playing with her swollen nipples, his temporarily softened cock hot at her still wet, shivering entrance.

“What? You’d make a painting out of it to cart around with you?”

His chuckle buzzed down her naked back, drawing another spasm out of her well-fucked pussy and his palm instantly ran hot and steady down her stomach to soothe her, “there is really no comparison, is there? A painting will reveal its beauty only when appropriate lighting is arranged, whereas you, sweetheart,” he kissed down her neck, forehead and eyelashes and tip of nose grazing her skin as if to bask in her, “you light up a room all by yourself.”

A part of her was stunned, floating in limbo looking down at herself with unseeing eyes and hitched breaths. Yet the other felt so warm and full the weirdest thing spilled out of her parted lips, “I’d make a gorgeous painting though.”

His beautiful laugh grounded her to reality like his strong arms around her waist, “that you would, love,” he flipped them over until he was on top of her, lashes brushing and smiles mirroring, “that you would.”

Before Klaus, Caroline had long since resigned to the fact that she was the one out of a million vampires that didn’t even have the slimmest slip of hope to find a soulmate. She was destined to lie her bare, clear skin against someone who’d always dream of a blurry face down the road, a face that could be anyone in the world but her.

Caroline remembered seeing some movie about a woman who had the terrible disease of not being able to recognize anyone’s facial features. The poor woman would draw the pattern of her fiancée’s shirt collar and tie every morning on her notebook just to prove that he was not like anyone else. Of course at the end of the movie she found “the one”, whose face she could actually remember, but even if she didn’t-it would still be okay, Caroline told herself.

Even the ones with a mark weren’t bestowed the guarantee of an eternity with a soulmate. A lot of them didn’t get to feel the bond, the sparks, the _rightness_ ; instead they were trapped in endless searching and longing and feeling lost, just like her.

Being the optimist she was Caroline had dreamed long and hard about someone who wasn’t so set on finding “the one”. They could give it a shot. So what if the compatibility wasn’t one hundred percent and they didn’t get nature’s ultimate blessing? She’d work really, _really_ hard to make up for that. She’d take a thousand books of notes if she had to.

How naïve she’d been.

She was like a tow truck in most of her past relationships, straining to get forward an inch at a time with a dead weight, which she’d sooner or later lose along the road.

Yet with Klaus, everything was different. She was running east and west in circles but somehow he’d always catch up, without missing a step. It was so natural and perfect, like those figure skating pairs dancing to the music, keeping in sync with each other by a mere glance; and it was absolutely terrifying because she felt like she was falling at any minute, only that it never did happen and instead she was…soaring.

“The soul wants what the soul wants.” Beatrice was taunting her in her pain-ridden mind, “the sooner you admit to it, the sooner your heart will be free.”

Funny how everyone kept saying that, no matter their varied assumptions on _her_ life. _You are soulmates. You are not soulmates. You don’t have a soulmate. You’ll be alone and empty forever_ -admit to it.

Caroline clang to the rocks above her, pushing herself up all on the fulcrum of her exposed bones. She didn’t have to _admit_ to anything. So far her immortal life was shorter than her human one, and even that short span she’d fought all the way through-by her deadly fangs that bit like a champ, not by proving people right.

“I enjoy the way you fight.” Klaus once complimented her, his lips stretching into a sharp curl as if replaying the swing of her fist.

She frowned at that, “are you mocking me?”

Caroline knew she wasn’t skilled at physical combat. She wasn’t bad, all things considered, but of all the things at which she’d consider herself a pro, throwing punches wasn’t high on the list.

“Not at all, love.” Klaus chuckled, the sound going straight to parts of her body that she didn’t dare think of in his presence, “of course, you are still young, your strength is lacking, and some of your attacks weren’t that efficient to begin with-”

“You are doing a fantastic job proving your point.” Caroline tossed out in sarcasm, her arms crossing.

Klaus smiled almost indulgently at that, continuing without a pause, “-but the way you threw yourself all in, like the whole world behind you was on fire and you had no room for retreat. It was…breathtaking.”

His eyes landed on her lips and she just knew he was wondering if she kissed like she fought, because every bit of her body was feeling the heat of that fire he just described, screaming at her to close her eyes and lean forward.

That was the first night they met.

It wasn’t really a good night, bartending-wise. For one it was a weekend, and weekend meant free time for all the humans (or the vampires that cared to keep a cover job), which led to an overflow of vamp-groupies and victims with sheer dumb luck who didn’t know what they were getting themselves into. Plus there was a mysterious massacre in town-a whole house of vampires wiped out in less than ten minutes (later her suspicions were confirmed that Klaus had a little bit of  “business” to attend to), which put all the vampires in a testy mood.

Caroline internally groaned when she saw Brady traipsing inside. Ever since she freed an innocent human girl from his grasp the newly-turned vampire had been messing with her nonstop. So far he’d more or less stuck to the bar’s rule of no open fights in public areas, but still it was a real pain dealing with his vicious taunts and tricks.

“There she is.” Brady leaned over the counter grinning wide, “my favorite bartender.”

“Brady.” Caroline kept her face neutral. In the corner of her eyes she could see Klaus leaning back with his blood-scotch in hand, fingers tapping the rim of the glass in piqued interest.

“So how have you been? Anything new?” Brady gushed in a fake high-pitched voice, “haircut? No? Got any tattoos yet?”

Caroline’s eyes narrowed, “no, but I see you’ve got one, and I got to say, it’s not looking very good.” Suddenly she gasped, hand covering her mouth feigning surprise, “oh wait-that’s just your very unpleasant personality.”

Klaus’ snorted laugh tickled her right ear just as the sound of Brady clenching his teeth reached her left.

“Oh yeah? Well your boyfriend must be very fond of your sharp tongue, Miss Pleasant Personality.” The young vampire bit out, “oh wait-that’s your ex. And I bet that sweet little ass of yours he was only in it for the tongue, and nothing more.”

Caroline stiffened for a second before answering, her voice crisp and cold, “either order or get out, Brady.”

Brady sneered, knowing he’d hit a weak spot, “Closing shop so early? What? Can’t wait to go back home and cozy up with your copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude?”

“And where did you learn that title from? Summer school?”

The one thing all young vampires hated-well, all young _persons_ hated-was being reminded of their own age. Caroline should know-she’d been there after all.

She watched with triumphant amusement as Brady bristled, her eyes widening in alert as he bent down and broke the leg off his stool. Klaus’ stance changed in her peripheral but she didn’t leave him the chance to make a move. In the blink of an eye she had Brady’s hand pinned on the counter with the makeshift stake he was just holding, turning the young vampire's raged roar into a painful hiss.

“Always keep in mind that I have a good five years on you.” She smirked while holding the stake firmly in place, “sure it won’t seem too huge a gap when we both have another century or so on our belts, but who knows?” She lowered her voice menacingly, “you may not get that far.”

“Now that’s one stool and a dent on my newly renovated countertop.” She pushed the tip jar into Brady’s contorted face, “if you don’t mind?”

It wasn’t very nice, stooping to his level. But it felt freakishly good.

So good that she was humming to herself while wiping the blood off the counter, and Klaus’ velvety voice startled her, “that was quite impressive.”

“Thanks.” Caroline eyed him warily, “for trying to help.”

For a moment the guy almost looked shy, his head lowered to just the right angle, dimly-shining curls tempting her to sink her fingers in that inviting softness, “not that you needed it.”

“Still.” Caroline mumbled out. She was barely paying attention to their conversation, her skin burning up from their proximity. He smelled like a windy forest and blood and scotch, scotch that she just poured him, which was now glistening on his very kissable dark-red lips…

“So…you are an outlier then?”

“Seriously?” Caroline raised her eyebrows in annoyance.

Klaus quirked his own brows in response, “what? Sore subject?”

“You are unbelievable.”

“Come on, love,” Klaus crooned, the sound rolling off of Caroline’s nerve endings like a gentle-caressing hand, “don’t tell me you still believe in the soulmate myth.”

“I don’t.” Her voice wasn’t as sure as she thought it would be, “with all due respect-it’s a cheat sheet.”

“One could argue you are just sour.”

Caroline shrugged, “maybe I am. Who wouldn’t want to have it easy?” She accidentally inhaled too deep and had to steady herself from the irony woodsy musk filling her chest, feeling light-headed, “you know, to be able to recognize his scent like it’s extracted from your own pores;” His eyes deliciously burnt into her and her bones were just short of melting, marrow hot as lava, “to sense his presence so strong, the pull so irresistible; To know without a shadow of doubt that he’s yours even before you learn his last name…”

Her voice dropped to a moaning whisper as she heard something akin to a growl rumbling in his wide, sculpted chest. She could swear she saw his necklaces vibrating to the sound, or maybe it was her treacherous body all along.

“You are right, sweetheart.” He sighed into their tangled gaze, “who wouldn’t indeed.”

They spent the rest of that night never revisiting the soulmate subject. She wondered briefly if he had the mark. There were all kinds of rumors concerning the soulmate condition of the originals (it was an easy guess-he even gave her his name upfront, and Caroline had not been immersed five years in the alcohol-drenched supernatural grapevines for nothing), the most melodramatic one being that they all bore the same mark and were trapped eternally in the incestuous bond.

But never would she have thought that one day she’d personally be involved in those rumors.

Klaus was discreet, and more so was she. But after a few years of “bumping into” each other all over the world in crowded establishments where walls had supernatural ears and eyes, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that she’d hear the story of “the original hybrid finally finding his soulmate after a thousand years” quoted back to her with eye-opening details.

“They say she’s an outlier, you know?” The girl giggled over her seventh shot of tequila, winking at Caroline secretively, “or thought she was. But it turns out she had the mark all along. The hybrid found it when he was…you know, and it was in her-”

Caroline had to “accidentally” break three glasses in a row to shut her up.

It felt weird hearing about _them_ from other people’s lips. Weirder when she made the mistake of moving to Chicago aka one of Klaus’ favorite playgrounds where everyone treated her like the Queen and tipped her at least a hundred percent (she high-tailed it out of that insane town in less than a week).

And then there were these moments when he unceremoniously entered her newest workplace, all eyes were turning and the boisterous screams and laughter seconds ago suddenly dropped into a sea of hushed whispers, while he leant forward at the bar and waited for her to pour him a drink without a word. When she pushed the filled glass to him but he pushed it aside and pulled her in instead, his tongue stirring up a storm inside her while his lips swallowed every clash of thunder with greed and desire and endearment. When their kiss ended but not quite, and he lingered at the corner of her mouth just soaking her in, not making a sound, but she heard the soft utterance of “sweetheart” in the deepest corner of her soul.

In those moments it wasn’t weird at all.

It felt so right that she shivered to her core in unnamable fear.

“You make me expect things.” She confessed that fear to him in one of the rare nights when she was off her bartending duty and actually got some much-needed alcohol in her circulation system.

“And that’s a bad thing, why?” He tucked a strand of her tousled hair behind her ear, thumb gently stroking the soft skin just behind her earlobe and Caroline felt all of her living senses flocking to that one spot like fireflies, hot and pattering.

“Because…” She was at a loss for words. Acting on instinct, she leaned in, the familiar magnetic pull heavy on her lips and her eyelids fluttered half-shut. Her breath caught when he was just a millisecond away, his scent coating her lips like the smoothest wine, softly burning for more, and it took all her will power to stop there, hovering.

“You feel this?” She murmured in desperation, every touch on her lips that wasn’t his hurt, “it never stops.”

“And again,” he touched his forehead to hers, eyes warm and tender, “that’s a bad thing, why?”

He chuckled at her frustrated huff, catching her pouting lower lip in between his teeth briefly before letting her go, “I know you’d touch these sweet lips of yours to mine eventually, if not this moment then the next. And that, sweetheart, is an expectation.”

Suffice it to say that particular expectation was met almost instantly.

Caroline didn’t know why she kept thinking about him. If she didn’t know better she’d diagnose herself with severe werewolf bite. The symptoms certainly fit: she was in fever, nauseous, coughing up blood, her whole body was sore, and these unbidden thoughts of Klaus might as well have been hallucinations.

But the feeling of the key in her flesh was clear as the daylight that never seemed to dawn. She had no idea how long she’d been climbing, or how far she’d come. People often took vampire’s heightened senses too literal, but it wasn’t just the strength or the speed. They saw clearer, they thought faster, they measured all variables more accurately-basically they had a much better grasp of the world.

And now all that was gone for the moment except for one-Caroline had the gut feeling that Beatrice wouldn’t let her die.

She also had the gut feeling that whatever came after she climbed up this cliff wouldn’t be easy. Who knew what it would take to dig the damn key out. If it was up to her she’d rather be bitten by a werewolf, at least then they’d know the cure for sure.

She paused as the word “they” crossed her mind, realizing that she’d never even contemplated the possibility of Klaus not being there when she tackled the climb, however hard that was proving to be.

In all fairness she’d never been one to stay away from trouble for long, but she was smart and a fast learner, and if “getting out of hazardous situations” was an actual job she’d nail the interview in flying colors. But looking back, there had been a few close calls in the past years, and she probably wouldn’t even be hanging here if not for Klaus. Somehow he always knew when to show up.

He was there when a few nights after they met each other, Brady and his friends ambushed her in the back alley behind the bar; he was there down in New Orleans when she was protecting her witch roommate from her ridiculously powerful coven that had clearly gone cuckoo; he was there when she had that untimely run-in with the werewolf pack in the Appalachians.

That last one happened just a few months ago. She was out of it pretty much the entire time, her last coherent memory the werewolves sinking their venomous teeth in her, and then there was just bits and pieces of fiery pain and insatiable thirst. She found herself back in the world of consciousness with the taste of death and blood mingling on her tongue. _His_ blood.

He was holding her tightly in his arms, his voice bone-weary with barely contained anxiety and relief, “as much as I enjoy the lovely stroke of serendipity in our encounters, sweetheart, I would rather not keep finding you in such compromising status.”

“Well it’s nice seeing you too, Klaus.” She couldn’t help nuzzling into his chest a little more, but not before she looked up and found his face devoid of any emotions.

“I’m serious, Caroline.”

Despite the stony expression he sounded pained, like there was some flesh-eating wound growing inside him.

“I don’t understand.” But a part of her was starting to, as she took in the tremors of his eyelashes and the rawness that they tried to hide beneath.

“I can’t promise that I’ll always be there.” Anger was brewing in the deep cut of his frown and he swallowed, hard, his jaw shaking imperceptibly, “you can’t ask that of me.”

Caroline sighed, raising a hand to cup the tense lines of his face, “you don’t have to make that promise.”

Klaus’ glare was nearly murderous when his eyes harshly cut into hers, but bit by bit they softened like the end of a rigid winter night, his lips thawing into a faint smile, “I’m afraid that’s not up to you, love.”

There was a halt in his speech before he whispered his long-term nickname for her, the word sounding too light and frivolous all of a sudden. But it was tempered by the moment of hanging silence that came just before, filled with what he could not say-need not say.

That moment was burnt into Caroline’s memory, replaying on loop for the months to come when she couldn’t get to sleep fast enough. And now it was montaged in her mind with the scene of Beatrice idly fingering the unknown herbs scattered around the antique table, her eyes intent as if reading them like tea leaves, “you are Niklaus’ soulmate, as he is yours. And no, it has nothing to do with fate, but everything to do with magic, namely, me.”

Her motions stopped for a minute, a smile creeping up the tiny wrinkles around her eyes, “well, it might have something to do with fate. After all, I didn’t know who he’d end up with when I cast the spell.” She studied Caroline with gleaming eyes, “how intriguing to see it play out.”

Caroline, for one, didn’t find it intriguing at all, especially when this whole show was put on at her expense. Sometimes she just didn’t understand these raging crazy ancient…beings who had long crossed the threshold of old age even in supernatural standards, Klaus included. Hell Klaus was no doubt the worst of them all, though she now had to pen in Beatrice alongside his name.

They had the true taste of immortality, of seeing so much that anything was dispensable, of living so long that boredom became the only lethal nemesis.

Which was probably why they conjured up a ruse that fooled the entire vampire population for almost a thousand years, and would continue to drive them to hell and back with false hope and misguided dedication for thousands more to come.

A ruse Caroline had been in on since four years ago.

Back then she was still a nameless vampire bartender (who was having sporadic clandestine meet-ups with the original hybrid, but no one needed to know about that), instead of the mysterious blonde outlier that every vampire knew to be _Klaus’ newfound soulmate_. It was in San Francisco, a trendy night club with a surprisingly tasteful wine cellar, where Caroline had took Klaus’ full length down her throat in one swift move before the knowledge that he appeared out of nowhere even registered in her head.

She went back to the bar with his scent still lingering at the back of her tongue, the obscenities he’d muttered through ragged breaths echoing in her head, making her toes curl and her pace uneven. And there he was, waiting at the bar smirking with those lips that only seconds ago parted in breath-taking vulnerability.

The desire to kiss him ripped through Caroline like an earthquake, and she poured him a bourbon laced with blood while the crumbles boomed in her ears.

“A fine establishment I have to say.” Klaus sipped at his drink, “and the cellar was just _divine_.”

Caroline watched the dark liquid tainting his lips, and impulsively acted on the sudden urge to break her rule. She reached a hand to tilt the glass he was still holding towards herself, her lips touching the rim just beside the tip of his index finger, taking a long sip with her eyes drowning in his.

Klaus’ fingers tightened around the glass, his hand almost following her when she finally drew back, “what happened to ‘no drinking while working’?”

“I want to have a taste of tonight’s special-bourbon, blood, and _you_.” She stared in fascination as his eyes grew darker and more dazed with each word. She knew he was tasting the exact same thing as she, their hot messy kiss in the cellar after she’d swallowed the last drop of him still pulsing inside her mouth.

Klaus was just about to respond when a redhead in a crop top and mini skirt snuck up near him, touching his arm in blatant seduction, “I bet we have matching marks. I can just feel it.”

Caroline snorted, not caring if the girl heard her or not. Klaus eyed her with dancing mirth in his eyes, not sparing the redhead a side glance, “I doubt that, sweetheart.”

To her credit, the girl was persistent enough as she leaned forward, showing an eyeful of her cleavage, “well I can show you. I’m Celeste, by the way.” Turning sideways, she jutted out her hip provocatively, heaping the hem of her skirt up in slow motion until it reached the end of her thigh, revealing a wild rose on her hip bone.

Six years into her vampirism and Caroline still felt it a little hard to breathe whenever she was in the presence of a soulmate mark. She couldn’t fathom how other vampires were able to just prance around with that piece of magic force on their body like it was nothing. Or maybe it was the exposure-you spent enough time with your mark and grew used to the magic. She wouldn’t know-she never had one to test it out.

But it seemed that Klaus wasn’t totally immune to the magic radiating off the mark either, as he turned slightly around to contemplate the intricate lines of the rose, something flashing through his eyes, “a rare breed, I see.”

Caroline frowned at that. As far as she knew, true soulmates notwithstanding, every soulmate mark was different than the other. But come to think of it, the clichéd flower design in the tattoo industry did seem kind of lacking in the sea of soulmate marks she’d seen. But she wasn’t at all in the mood to ponder on that, flames flaring inside her as she watched Celested all but draped herself all over Klaus with her perky ass half hanging out.

“Now that I’ve caught your interest…” She blew into Klaus’ ear, “care to show me yours?”

Klaus, happening to be in an infuriatingly better mood than Caroline at the moment, simply brushed her off, “sadly my passing interest was solely directed at that mark, not its bearer.”

As soon as Celeste walked off in a huff, Caroline blurted out the question that was eating at her, “so what’s your mark like anyway?”

They’d seen each other naked for countless times by that point, but she was always too caught in the moment and this strange, all-consuming pull she felt in her gut whenever she was around Klaus. Excuse her for not giving him a full-body examination.

“Does it matter?”

Caroline averted his eyes, “not really.”

Whatever his mark was, she wouldn’t match him anyway-not that she wanted to match him but…Caroline hated the hot tears that were suddenly blurring her vision, the only warmth left in her body as the coldness slithering across her skin freezing her into a numb empty shell of aching barrenness, “it’s not like I have anything to compare notes with you.”

Klaus covered her hand with his, a hint of concern in his voice, “you are better than that, Caroline. You don’t need some pathetic little mark to dictate who you spend your eternity with.”

His thumb gently brushed her knuckles and they felt warm and alive, but the rest of her skin was still cold as ice, so cold that her insides exploded in a bout of blazing hellfire.

“Well maybe I do!” She shook his hand off abruptly, her whole body trembling in heated fury, “maybe I want that mark, so bad that I could feel every inch of my damn skin hurting to the bones at night. Maybe I'm sick of the way people look at me, like I'm some ugly fruit that's bound to be thrown out of the cart before it even makes it to the stupid grocery store. Maybe just being like everyone else, having what they have, is enough for me.”

“But it’s not, is it?” He asked quietly when she finally finished her rant, his eyes boring into hers with such intensity she found herself locked into place, unable to look away.

“It could have been. If I had the mark in the first place.” She answered weakly, not much fight left in her, but not ready to concede defeat.

His smirk was merciless while his eyes belied something akin to regret, “even if I told you it was all a lie?”

That night back into her apartment, he told her everything. How almost nine hundred years ago he and his siblings, with inebriated abandon, summoned a witch friend named Beatrice to perform a spell that would put a mark on every vampire born after that point. How they started the rumor of vampire soulmates for their own amusement, even though the only thing the marks could show was a vampire’s true lineage.

“I was a little surprised earlier when I saw Celeste’s mark, because it belonged to my brother Finn’s bloodline, which was a small clan compared to the others.” For a flitting moment nostalgia marred his face, “he was, in his bones, a nature’s man. Thus the plant-shaped marks.”

“Wait,” Caroline frowned, “you said only the vampires born after that had the marks, and that was when the rumor started. What about the ones you turned before?”

His silence said it all. What better way to keep a secret than sending it to the grave (or in their case, the other side)?

Caroline was shaking all over. Her mind couldn’t wrap around this grand scheme, dragging so many in for centuries, only for the pleasure of so few. All those searching and longing, hearts broken or discarded, all for nothing but an illusion, a lie that wasn’t even very well-crafted.

“Did you come up with this?” She turned her accusing eyes to Klaus. She wouldn’t be surprised, having heard the ins and outs of the sun and moon curse from her past friends.

He shook his head, “this whole thing was more my brother Kol’s style. The rest of us just went along. Though I can’t say I didn’t contribute to a part of the idea.”

“Which part?” She shot back sharply.

For the first time since Klaus started telling the story, hesitation seeped into his voice, “the part where some of my bloodline wouldn’t have a mark.”

Caroline fled the city that very night.

For so long she’d been under the hold of this little mark. She’d went through the whole spectrum of emotions for it. She’d raged and ranted, shed tears, laughed in contempt, feigned nonchalance, and then went through the process all over again for a million times. And it all turned out to be nothing more than a drunken joke.

It was the single most sadistic thing she’d ever heard, and Caroline found herself in a violent turmoil that she wasn’t sure she could ever get out of. Anger and loss clawed at her heart, vengeful triumph spurred her on while inexplicable sadness ran over the wounds its bitter trail, but all of this still couldn’t quite hide the tiny shoots of happiness and relief that…he didn’t have a soulmate after all.

And on top of it all she missed him. Despite better judgment, out of sane senses or control, every fiber of her being ached for that egotistical, manipulative, cruel-out-of-his-mind sociopath. She cursed his name while touching herself in the darkness of her room, her hot wet sex clenching painfully around her own fingers as the curses turned into inaudible sighs.

Deep in her heart she knew she just needed time. Maybe in a year, or a century, she’d be able to look past this and take another chance.

Klaus gave it three months.

Caroline heard his laugh before she even stepped foot into the night club. Or rather, she felt it vibrating on her oversensitive skin that had been starved of him since the big reveal of the millennium. She steadied herself on her newly-purchased four-inch high heels. They were as gorgeous as they were uncomfortable, Buenos Aires was exceptionally warm and humid that night, there was only five minutes left until her shift started, and Caroline was in no mood to deal with him whatsoever.

Half an hour of mixing and serving, stumbling through her recently revived high school level Spanish, batting her eyelashes till she had spasms through her eyelids just to spite him while pretending not to hear his passionate and oh-so-tempting laughter, and Klaus finally sauntered over from his corner booth, the bunch of strangers he’d been surrounding himself with flanking him stiffly like puppets.

Caroline didn’t even try to hide her grin when his ravenous eyes stayed on her breasts accentuated by a tight black tank top a minute too long and his Adam’s apple bobbed at the sight, though the sound ignited a few fires inside her as well.

“Caroline.” He drawled out her name with a lilt, knowing full well it always drove her near crazy with arousal.

“Oh it’s you.” She answered in a clipped tone, “why am I not surprised.”

“Ouch.” He put a hand over his heart dramatically, “I must be losing my touch. It’s a good thing I brought company.”

Caroline watched suspiciously as he pulled two brunettes out of his entourage, a vicious smirk on his face, “I present to you Jessie and Meg. You may not be aware but these two love birds are soulmates. What a marvelous thing.”

“What are you getting at?” One glance at the couple’s glassy eyes and Caroline was sure they were compelled.

“Patience, love.” He chided softly, and though the words annoyed Caroline to no end the tone sent electric charges straight down to her toes, “now Jessie, how about you confess to us your undying love for your one and only?”

Jessie’s face contorted in resentment, “I can’t stand her.”

“Shocking.” Klaus shook his head, turning to Meg, “and you sweetheart? What do you feel about your soulmate?”

Clearly confused and frightened by the situation but unable to fight the compulsion, Meg was close to tears, “I feel nothing! I mean he’s cute and all, but soulmate? There must be some mistake…”

“Hmmm,” licking his raspberry lips Klaus gestured between the two, “see that’s the problem. You two are such a miserable match-why are you together again?”

“Well we do have matching marks and I heard it’s really rare, so there must be something…” Meg’s words faltered to a stop.

“Klaus,” Caroline clenched her fists, “whatever this is, stop it.”

“Why? Are you not enjoying this?” Klaus quirked an eyebrow, “we haven’t got to the best part yet. Come on, darling,” he dragged a dirty blonde girl forward, “why don’t you tell your story?”

“My boyfriend and I tell people we’re soulmates but we’re actually not. We just don’t want them to think we are doomed, you know.”

“And you, mate?” This time it was a skinny guy.

“I’m an outlier. I can’t take the bullying anymore so I found a witch and paid her to put this spell on me so my tattoo feels like it has magic in it, I mean it doesn’t hurt anybody, right? ”

Caroline had heard enough. She knew Klaus had the tendency to go overboard. She witnessed with her own eyes how he peeled off Brady’s soulmate mark with his bare hands, shoving the severed skin into his screaming mouth all while compelling him to scratch the mark off as soon as it grew back. But at least she knew where he was coming from with that-the dude nearly drove a stake through her heart. This time, not so much.

“I swear to god, Klaus,” she bit out through clenched teeth, “if you don’t stop this farce right now I’ll make sure you never ever find me again. Don’t even start-” She pointed a finger at him, daring him to defy her, “you know I can if I really want to.”

He held her gaze for a long while, the lines of his face harsh and unmoving, until finally letting out a heavy sigh. Caroline watched silently as he compelled his poor companions to forget about this and leave, his tone strained and spine rigid.

“That was unnecessarily cruel.” She said heatedly after the last one of them was out of sight.

Klaus shrugged, “what can I say, love? You start a rumor, live long enough, and then you get to see it fester and even stir the wounds.”

Caroline scoffed, “you feel so proud of yourself, don’t you? The great mastermind, the almighty puppeteer, playing everyone with a snap of his finger with no regard to their feelings. You, and this mysterious, evil family of yours. You don’t care about how people’s lives would be turned upside-down. You don’t care what this would do to some…pathetic girl a couple centuries later. So what if she loses a few nights’, or a few years’ sleep over it? At least you had a good laugh while you were at it!”

“Caroline…” he wiped at his face frustrated, “you knew who I was all along. Did you honestly think I survived a thousand years by being a philanthropist? We are monsters, we do evil things, that’s just the way it is.”

“Is it though?” Caroline let out a cold laugh, the sound scratching her own ears, making her wince inwardly, “you are saying that you never felt a sliver of regret over this? That in a thousand years you haven’t for one second doubted your crazyass choice? That you never looked at an outlier and thought about how capriciously unmerciful you’ve been?”

“Not until you.”

Caroline’s breath hitched at the vulnerability in his eyes. He gave her a sad little smile, pushing a lose strand of hair out of her face, his finger lighting tiny flames along the way, “and it’s killing me inside that I can do nothing about it.”

“But there is one thing I can tell you, sweetheart.” His strokes along her jawline were soft as feathers and Caroline felt as if she were floating, but the sincerity in his eyes grounded her, “you don’t have a streak of pathetic in you. I’ve seen thousands of vampires through the years and every one of them is caught up in this soulmate mesh, whether they are trying desperately to gnaw their way out or stay still. But you, love, you are the one bird that has her eyes for the sky.”

She looked up, skin alight and lips agape, only to drown in the depths of his blue eyes, and the only notion crossing her mind was that the sky may well be another mesh. And when she pressed her burning lips to his so hard she couldn’t tell his tongue from her own, she felt like it was okay.

Caroline would never have known that four years later she’d revisit this memory on the side of a cliff, and it was what pushed her through the last tens of feet of climb.

She wasn’t that far from her destination after all.

As her fingers came into contact with the first flat surface she’d touched in like forever, she was enveloped in the warm embrace of his deep sigh, “we have got to stop meeting like this, sweetheart.”

Next thing she knew she was lifted by a pair of strong arms and soon she landed in Klaus’ lap, his familiar scent soothing every bit of soreness in her suffering body. Klaus was holding her securely against him while examining her up and down, his eyes closing briefly when he took in the wretched status of her hands.

Caroline chuckled weakly, “don’t tell me the original hybrid feels faint at the sight of a little blood.”

Klaus silently answered with a stern look her way, obviously not up for teasing.

But then again, he never was when he was the one being teased. When the roles were reversed the guy was a freaking hoot. Caroline vividly remembered when he was trying to talk her into a ridiculous position (which involved her hanging upside-down against him with her ankles crossed behind his neck) during sex he threw that “inspire, aspire and perspire” line from her Miss Mystic Falls application in her face. She could still feel his cock stirring so deliciously inside her from his laughter…

“Caroline?”

She felt Klaus shaking her gently, his brows knitted in worry. “Sorry, just zoned out for a bit.” Clearly blood loss could cause her mind to wander. Well, that, and Klaus.

He nudged her head into the crook of his neck with a single word, “drink.”

Caroline swallowed hard against his pulse point, her fangs twitching in her gum as the smell of his blood tempted her. Biting her lips, she pushed back slightly, meeting his anxious eyes, “I can’t. You have to dig the key out first.”

Letting the flesh heal around it would only make it harder to get out.

“Key?” Klaus’ frown of confusion soon turned into a murderous look, “what did Beatrice do to you?”

Caroline didn’t bother to ask him how he got his intel, “she buried a key in my heart. And before you make any suggestions, no we can’t just snap my neck. She already did when she left me down there, and I could feel the key reemerging as I came back from the dead. It must be a part of the magic. We have to do it when I’m alive. Well, as alive as I can be.”

A growl rumbled from Klaus’ chest, “when I get my hands on that woman I will stab her all over with keys she’ll look like a pin cushion. She dare touch what is mine…” Something dawned on him before Caroline had the chance to protest, “bloody hell.”

“What?”

“Back when we were doing the soulmate mark ritual she asked me what I’d do if I did have a soulmate. And I told her-” he averted his eyes from Caroline’s inquiring gaze, his voice trembling slightly, “ _far be it from me to hold the key to someone's heart. I'd carve an inferno out of it yet._ ”

“Hey,” Caroline stroked the nape of his neck, “no inferno for me. You can compel me to not feel the pain and-”

Klaus wrapped his hand around her wrist, a knowing look in his eyes, “you are on vervain, aren’t you?”

No one could be more aware of the fact than herself, but hearing it from him still sent her mind reeling. She’d been taking vervain every day since she first met him. She kept the habit even when they went months without crossing paths, when she had no guarantee that he’d show up ever again. But somehow, she just _knew_.

She counted on it, heart and soul, like it was the one sure thing in her life that could never fail her.

Growing up Caroline had always secretly loved winter. It was harsh and freezing and all her favorite summer dresses would have to go deep into the corner of her closet, but there was the ever-present expectation of snow. She’d be idly going about her life and suddenly snow was falling, and the whole world came to a still. Everything would silence until she could hear those distinct footsteps from a while away, her own heartbeats syncing with them.

It was the same way with Klaus. Only in this case everything was warm, burning even, and the proverbial snowflakes scorched her skin in the ultimate silence of the world.

“Do it, then.” She looked him square in the eyes, “dig the key out of me.”

“Are you sure?” Klaus pressed his palm to the left of her sternum, the heat seeping through her blood-soaked top drawing out a low moan from her, “Caroline, I will have to ram my hand in through here, break your ribcage, and reach up. You’ll feel my every touch, right inside your heart.”

She smiled, her eyes suddenly wet, “it’s nothing I haven’t felt before.”

Klaus sucked in a sharp breath. Two seconds later his lips slowly curled into a mirroring smile, and Caroline had never seen such gentle fire as the one lighting up his eyes, “with pleasure, sweetheart.”

He put her down on the ground and knelt over her, his hand shoving inside her chest as his lips crushed to hers, swallowing her scream of pain. His move was skilled and precise, as was his tongue, stroking all the sensitive spots inside her mouth. His other hand joined the ministrations, massaging her right breast, twitching her nipple whenever his tongue reached in deep, sending hot desire flowing all through her body and it almost surpassed the pain.

Almost.

Her head fell back in an agonized groan as he took her heart into his grip. The pain was so intense she felt paralyzed, the only other recognizable sensation the coldness on her lips from the loss of his.

“Shhhh, breathe, sweetheart, breathe.” Klaus stroked her hair, kissing her lightly along her brow and nose, “do you still want me to go on?”

“Yes.” She rasped shakily.

“Then we have to try something else.”

Caroline nodded, her eyes closing in exhaustion.

She felt his lips descending on her again, and she eagerly welcomed him, tangling his tongue with her own. Even with his hand grazing her heart this still felt nice, and her body was heating up fast. His left hand played with her nipple for a while before going south until it reached the hem of her panties. He ran a finger along her slit, feeling the wetness pooling down there, and Caroline moaned softly in response.

“I love how you are always ready for me, sweetheart.” He whispered in her ear, tongue darting out to lick her earlobe as he pulled her panties down, fingers skillfully stroking her folds, “so wet. Even now. I can smell you all the way up here, Caroline.”

Moaning again, she opened her eyes to meet his, the raw desire in there bleeding through the charged air between them, washing over her like tides, and she felt something wet flowing down the inside of her thigh. The next second Klaus’ fingers were there, smearing it all over her sensitive skin.

“Already dripping?” He sucked behind her ear, “you are such a good girl today, sweetheart. So eager. I believe a treat is in order.”

His fingers ran up to her clit and started drawing circles around it, pressing down in the center once every few strokes to draw a gasp from her in the quickly accumulating throes of pleasure. She was already on edge, her senses heightened through the series of ordeals she’d been through, and she hadn’t had a decent release since they were last together. Minutes later she was panting hard, her head spinning and her pussy throbbing, just one push from teetering over.

“Yes, that’s it.” Klaus sucked on her pulse point, “come for me, love.”

He pinched her clit with two fingers and an orgasm burst out of her, shaking her to her core. In that instant he pushed two fingers into her pussy while the hand that had been hovering around her heart dug inside the taut muscle.

Caroline screamed out at the doubled sensations. Pain and pleasure twirled inside her, twisting around each other in a torturing push-and-pull. Her ears were ringing, her sight blurred in a mass of stars and black spots, and all she could hear was his voice.

“Focus on me, sweetheart. Feel my fingers inside your wet little pussy. You are so warm and tight Caroline.” He started drilling into her with his joint fingers, brushing over her G-spot to draw out her orgasm, “you know how good it feels when you squeeze around me? Like you don’t want to let go of me even for a split second?”

She could feel everything he was telling her, her toes curling from the prolonged ecstasy. She could also feel his other hand carefully searching around the walls of her heart, the motions surprisingly bringing out another shiver of lust.

His fingers started to pound faster, changing the angle so that his knuckles brushed her clit with each move. Sparks shot through her as another climax neared, the lingering heat of her last orgasm pushing the tides higher.

“Let go, love.” Klaus’ husky voice was the last straw, “I know you have it in you.”

The second orgasm ripped through her even stronger than the first, and along came with it the pain of his hand tearing through the valve between her ventricle and atrium, leaving Caroline trembling and spent. It was just too much, unbearably much, but as her mind cleared up a bit she noticed that Klaus’ hand wasn’t stopping, his thumb rubbing her swollen, oversensitive clit at the root, and her pussy clenched every time he made the tiniest move.

“Klaus,” she looked up at him pleadingly, “I don’t think I can…”

He kissed under her eyes so gently, and Caroline realized then that tears were running freely down her cheeks, “just hang in there a little longer. I can already feel the key, but it’s lodged right behind your aorta, if I dive in like this you won’t be able to stand the pain.” His fingers never stopped working their magic on her sex, building her up with their ruthless touch, but his eyes were so gentle that she feared her heart would start clenching on his other hand as well, “one more. I promise it’ll be over before you know it.”

For a moment she doubted she’d ever get there, having just come twice in minutes. All the sensations he was pulling out of her were gone in a blink, disappearing into the unknown corners of her body without a trace. But gradually they started lighting flames in the most unexpected places, the tips of her fingers and toes, her forearms and shoulders, and then the insides of her thighs, all the flames joining force, unfurling into a drawn-out blaze, setting every vessel and every cell on slow sizzling fire.

When she was once again close to the precipice, he leaned further down, silently baring the side of his neck to her. Caroline didn’t hesitate to sink her fangs into his pulsing artery, the sweet nectar of his blood flowing smoothly down her throat, and she felt her orgasm all but consumed her with the bloodstream pushing it to even the furthest end of her extremities.

She didn’t know how long it was until she came down from her high. Her eyes could barely stay open, but she saw the glint of the key between his fingers, all soaked in her blood. She could tell she was being lifted back into his arms, his hard chest against her cheek bringing more sense of safety and content than the feeling of her heart knitting itself back together.

“Beatrice said we are soulmates.” She murmured into his shirt at the brink of sleep.

“To quote your words of wisdom, my love,” he sealed a kiss at the corner of her lips, “it’s nothing I haven’t felt before.”


End file.
